Tuesday lunchtime and Sinitta is waving her US passport (who even knew she was American?) on Loose Women (ITV1) and declaring she's about to rush off to the US embassy to vote. If US election fever (Coleen Nolan aside - she's never voted, couldn't care less apparently, much to Carol McGiffin's annoyance) has permeated the fluffy daytime British TV schedules, it's reasonable to assume the US is near-delirious, even at breakfast time. BBC News, cautious as ever, says that 135 million voters may turn out today, while ITV rounds it up to a sexier 150 million. Whatever, all broadcasters are fixated on the length of the queues.

ITV's Mark Austin races through the day's US newspaper headlines - 'It's Up To You' (NY Daily News), 'The Final Push' (Washington Post) - before offering a succinct idiots' guide to how it all works: 538 electoral college votes, unevenly distributed around the country (California has 55, Wyoming three), 270 to win, winner takes all and Virginia is a (racially mixed) crucial swing state. Oh, and that red/blue thing, we are helpfully (patronisingly?) reminded, is confusing, what with red representing Republican and blue Democrat, 'the opposite' of our political colour-code.

On Sky, at 8am central time, we are treated to the full 20 minutes of Mr and Mrs Obama hunched over their ballot papers at the Shoesmith School gymnasium in Chicago. What on earth can be taking so long? Malia Obama yawns, fetchingly, while her little sister darts about.

I imagine trying to get through a 20-minute vote, accompanied by my kids ('No darling, no Nintendo until Mummy has ticked all the boxes which will help her become the Leader of the Free World') and I flick between channels to find out why it's taking so long. Only Sky has the answer: 'They're voting for judges, in local elections... the Illinois ballot has as many as 50 or 60 names, which explains why people in the US actually find it hard to go with the demands of voting.'

I love it when the commentary goes all Trivial Pursuit. This is the first US presidential election in which both candidates were born off the mainland United States: John McCain on a military base in Panama, Obama in Hawaii...

'I hope this works, I'll be really embarrassed if it doesn't,' says Barack Obama (dark suit, striped silvery tie) as he walks towards the ballot processing machine carrying a sheaf of papers. It works: 'I voted!' he says, and then his fellow voters move closer to shake his hand and point their cameraphones. Everybody is smiling, clearly delighted to be sharing his airspace. Republicans appear to be, well, nowhere.

I am snapping images like a human cameraphone. There is something very touching about the Obama cavalcade of dark people-movers with tinted windows driving away from the school, chased by a posse of young black kids smiling and jumping and high-fiving each other. The car slows, briefly, but our view is blocked by an inconvenient tree while the kids bounce away from the car like pinballs, grinning.

At this point, my au-pair (male, Slovakian, 24) wanders into the room, glances at the TV and says: 'Why are you interested? Why does this matter in England?' He is a very nice young man and great with the kids, but I have never met anybody as completely lacking in curiosity and as uninterested in the world beyond football results - which would be forgivable, perhaps, if he wasn't currently doing an MA in media studies.

I can barely hide my irritation: 'It matters enormously to the whole world... but, I guess, not you?' He shakes his head, smiles and walks away at precisely the moment we are told, by Sky, that the vote among American 19- to 26-year-olds is up by 250 per cent.

The BBC News channel has Hillary ('We need Barack Obama to be our next President') when I put in a call to a friend in New York, who is watching Rudy Giuliani on Fox, attempting to spin for a McCain win. I would love to be in New York seeing how Fox copes throughout the day with the (increasingly likely) outcome not going their way.

'Well, there is a lot of slightly manic laughter from the anchors,' says my friend, which would indicate a bit of a siege mentality, but apparently all the US broadcasters are extremely overexcited. Though this is the American news broadcasting default, the excitement has been ratcheted up to the point where, my friend tells me: 'ABC's Good Morning America even sent [their anchor] Diane Sawyer out on to the streets, to mix with real people,' which never happens.

The Fox polls sound like a hoot: they have, rather bonkersly, chosen the words 'scared' and 'excited' as electoral indicators, thus '12 per cent of Americans will be excited if McCain wins' immediately makes you think that 88 per cent will be scared, so this strategy may have backfired. Meanwhile, the US networks have picked up on the fact that Obama's oft-repeated buzzword is 'change' while McCain's is 'country', and it must be said that 'change' is sounding a whole lot sexier that 'country' - unless, presumably, you're a Republican.

Oh, and here's another Fox poll to make your flesh crawl. My friend tells me: 'Apparently, only 38 per cent of Americans think Sarah Palin would make a good President.' We both pause to process that. 'My god - I'm rubbish at maths but I still think that's the best part of 100 million people,' I say, which is a sobering thought.

Jeremy Vine has his touch-screen gizmo on Newsnight, but there is just as much technological cock-uppery as one would expect when interviewers and pundits attempt to chat across the time delays via wonky satellites. There has been a lot of talk on all channels about 'projections', but baseball caps off to CNN for its hologram of a reporter called Jessica beamed into the studio from Chicago, where she hovers about the ground for a bit, simply because she can. Her parents must have been so proud, but frankly it's not as if the results aren't going to be exciting enough, though I did start wondering who was going to be first with the exclusive Martin Luther King interview, projected live from the Beyond.

It could have been a long night, but it wasn't. The only problem, in reviewing terms, is that I'm so in-the-moment for most of it that I forget to take notes. I have given myself until Virginia before I go to bed, which means we get Ohio, NY, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Carolina, Kentucky, Connecticut... a laidback David Dimbleby, an uptight Grumpy Old Gore Vidal. And I am starting to feel slightly sorry for the Native American dance troupe booked to appear at the Biltmore in Phoenix for the McCain 'victory party'- a losers' gig if ever there was one. But McCain is very gracious in defeat, even as his graceless audience reveal their primary colours while booing any mention of Obama.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin hovers stage left, having swapped the jeans she'd worn earlier for some leftovers from the $150,000 wardrobe, which one sincerely hopes will now be donated to Alaska's most deserving charity shop, Moosefam. And because we are exactly the same age, I am struck (not for the first time) by the smoothness of the 44-year-old Palin brow, particularly here, now, under so much pressure. But hey, perhaps it's the air up there...

There is simply no need to take notes when the gloriously telegenic new First Family (though I have a moment's pause vis-à-vis Michelle's choice of frock, which calls to mind a ketchup accident during the kids' teatime) takes to the stage in Grant Park. Hell, I don't even know what channel I'm watching because I'm as blurry with tears as Jesse Jackson, whose expression of fit-to-burst joy mingled with relief and disbelief is one of the most potent and moving images of the night.

Later that morning, over breakfast, my six-year-old son Jackson watches the President-elect's speech in silence (our au-pair looks both bemused and unmoved). At the end, he says: 'Mummy, that's a good man', at which point, wiping away a tear or two, I recall, when I was just about my son's age, watching the Moon landing with awe. God knows, it's been a privilege to watch another giant leap today.

After the school run, I spend the whole of Wednesday in front of the TV. While watching the residents of the Japanese town of Obama doing their surreal Hawaiian hula for about the fifth time, I am worrying whether Dermot Murnaghan and Mark Austin are ever going to get some sleep. I catch up with Jon Stewart's The Daily Show on More4, in which Obama's former Harvard professor declares: 'There are two skinny guys from Illinois who made a difference: Abe Lincoln and Barack Obama.' To which a (black) contributor's riposte is: 'It's the same America - just darker, with baggier clothes.'

That afternoon, I send a one-line email to an American friend who I know will have been channel-hopping as much, if not more, than I have. 'What a great day!' I say, and ba(ra)ck comes the simplest, most elegant and eloquent email I have ever received: 'Yesterday was a great day because we could feel it happening. Today is a great day because, no matter what's ahead, we can feel confident that some things are behind us.' America: truly the land of the free and home of the great soundbite.